ABC -> PDF. Any ideas?

Gabriel · Post by **Gabriel** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 5:20 am

I'm looking for a program that can make a nice PDF with sheetmusic from any ABC tune I put in. I know of several possibilities to achieve this (concertina.net, convert to .ps and then to .pdf), but all of them require quite a lot of clicking around. I'm lazy, so a single-click version would be great.

Thanks in advance!

Trixle · Post by **Trixle** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 6:12 am

Nevermind, i was going to say concertina http://www.concertina.net/tunes_convert.html
but i dont know of any single click version... though three clicks isnt so bad.

MTGuru · Post by **MTGuru** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 6:31 am

If you install a PDF printer driver, then any ABC editor program (such as Barfly) that can print music notation output can print directly to a pdf file.

Personally, I use abcm2ps and Ghostscript to render ABC to PDF, and I use a batch file to encapsulate the details. I type "abc MyTune.abc" on the command line to create MyTune.pdf. Very easy. This is essentially what the concertina.net converter does behind the scenes.

colomon · Post by **colomon** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 7:17 am

MTGuru wrote:Personally, I use abcm2ps and Ghostscript to render ABC to PDF

Heathen! I use jcabc2ps and ps2pdf.

With my own hacks to jcabc2ps, of course.

Brigitte · Post by **Brigitte** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 7:24 am

http://www.heise.de/software/download/o0g0s3l3k51

This link came through today via the German Folkmailing list. I cannot read music so I am a little useless in realising what might be useful or not but in General the reading of some of the descriptions sounds promising. The link is not totally useless for non-German-readers as the programs usually are in English language.

Gabriel, if you are not subscribed to the German Folkmailing list I suggest doing it, it is not ITM based still there is useful information in every other email when it comes down to workshop infos, arrangement tips etc.

Brigitte

jemtheflute · Post by **jemtheflute** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 7:25 am

ABCEdit is pretty good - you can mess around with the layout more than on many ABC progs and it prints directly from the screen display if you want, or converts it direct to PDF with another menu choice, which you can then save to a file/folder, print, whatever - and you can also save images of the notation as bitmaps which you can use as they are or trim and paste into Word documents, convert to jpgs, etc........ If I remember aright, there's some extra software that you get invited to download when you install ABCEdit that does all that stuff. Anyway, highly recommended. Oh, and it can deal with multiple voices and other more advanced ABC styles.

MarcusR · Post by **MarcusR** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 7:26 am

Here is great way to convert abc-2-pdf without any need for acrobat ...

Download the Live CD for EscLinux, reboot your system and you'll have the abc-tools you need and more

Uses abc2ps and ps2pdf, also has some other nice abc notation and midi features. You can run it from the GUI or the command line, good for batch conversion.

When you are done just remove the CD and reboot back to windows

EscLinux for abc notation and interactive fiction writing

http://esclinux.tk

/MarcusR

Trebledoc · Post by **Trebledoc** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 8:32 am

I like PDFill. Its a general PDF tool. It lets you just go File -> Print -> PDF ! Can aslo merge and rearrange pdfs.

http://www.pdfill.com

Bill Reeder · Post by **Bill Reeder** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 8:59 am

I think ABCExplorer is a relatively new program which may be what you're looking for.

http://abc.stalikez.info/abcex.php/

eskin · Post by **eskin** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 10:07 am

ABC Navigator is quite good at printing tune books:

http://abcnavigator.free.fr/abcnvgt.php?lang=eng

Its also free...

I use it along with "CutePDF" which is a virtual printer device that generates PDF files. Also free.

sbfluter · Post by **sbfluter** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 11:24 am

I generate the GIF image from concertina.net, copy it to a new slide in Keynote, add the title, then go to File > Print > PDF and print my new slide to a PDF and save to the network drive. Then I run down the hall, fire up the boyfriend's PC, open my PDF and print it to paper.

Innocent Bystander · Post by **Innocent Bystander** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 3:50 pm

ABCExplorer sets my teeth on edge. I haven't worked out why. It does seem to have more features than Navigator but I like Navigator. I'm interested to know it produces PDFs. I hadn't got that far with it.

I tend to format Music on CorelDraw, and export it to PDF. Every so often I can't get Navigator to cope with the oddities of a tune: Jacha Uru is a case in point, because it changes tempo midway through, and back again.
With Corel it's like typsetting, but not as slow as you might imagine. There are even italic music fonts for that casual look.

fancypiper · Post by **fancypiper** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 6:21 pm

If your end desire is to have the dots and perhaps print them out, I recommend ABC2Win.

Bill Reeder · Post by **Bill Reeder** » Thu Jan 31, 2008 1:15 am

Innocent Bystander wrote:ABCExplorer sets my teeth on edge. I haven't worked out why. It does seem to have more features than Navigator but I like Navigator. I'm interested to know it produces PDFs. I hadn't got that far with it.

I find ABCexplorer to be somewhat prone to glitches. It does have some interesting features, which is why I mentioned when the original poster specified an interest in PDF files. Personally, I've been using ABC2WIN and ABCMUS for so long I'll probably never give them up. Funny though, Navigator just drove me nuts. I can't remember how many times I installed that program, tried it for a while, and then un-installed it again.

jemtheflute · Post by **jemtheflute** » Thu Jan 31, 2008 5:36 am

Yeah, I don't like Navigator either - horrible interface design aesthetically and practically, and seems to like a rather different approach to tune-writing syntax than most of the others, so you have to re-edit things like double bars etc. when you import to it. I have it loaded, but almost never use it - just to access thet huge Irtrad tune file Terry McGee passed on recently as it is the only software (before Explorer) that could handle the file size.
Just to reiterate, ABCEdit is much more musician/dot reader friendly than most of the others in its screen interface, and is very easy to move from to printed dots (in a better than average face) or saved computer images of dots in assorted formats - what the thread originator asked for. I prefer it for general use to ABC2Win or ABCMus.